Reading the news lately, it feels like there has been an increase in the challenging and banning of books, particularly around discussions of Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ representation. If you’re looking to fill your “Banned or challenged book” Book Bingo square, consider one of these titles:
In China, Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now is banned. It was censored due to inciting secession and taken out of libraries following passage of the Hong Kong national security law (2020).[1] The book itself is written by Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong protest leader. The book is divided into 3 parts: how Wong became a political activist, the letters he wrote while he was a political prisoner and a call to action for how we can change democracy.
Prisons often have different rules about which books are allowed in their libraries. One of these is The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, banned in North Carolina prisons and elsewhere because it was “likely to provoke confrontation between racial groups.”[2] The book itself is “a civil-rights lawyer’s disturbing view of why young black men make up the majority of the more than two million people now in America’s prisons.” (Kirkus Review)
All Boys Aren’t Blue: a Memoir-manifesto by George Johnson has been challenged at different schools by being “called “dirty” and describe what they say is “pornographic” language, inappropriate for minors. They say the books could cause mental health issues for students.”[3] The book, a collection of essays, “centers the experiences, desires, and agency of a queer Black boy navigating his evolving selfhood and the challenges of society’s conditional love for his truthful existence.” (Kirkus Review) Continue reading “#BookBingoNW2022: Banned or challenged book”